WyoTech, in Laramie Wyoming is a complete waste of money.
If you're thinking of going there, don't believe a word that the recruiters tell you. They are independent contractors that really have no real concept of the business. They will tell the redneck kids there is all kinds of hunting and off-roading nearby, and tell the cith kids Denver and Ft. Collins are just south. They will tell you ANYTHING you want to hear to sign you up. I did the diesel/auto program, and honestly, I knew very, very little more after I completed it, than I did before I went. WyoTech is owned by Corinthian colleges, and their goal is to make themselves money, not educate the students.
The school will end up costing you 25k or more, depending on what you sign up for, and this doesn't include living costs like food, rent, fuel, etc.
I guess the best way to illustrate this clusterf* organization is to describe my expierences there. You know all the fancy shops and hot rods and race cars and high-tech tools they show on Spike TV? None of that is real. My whole time there, I never ONCE saw any of that stuff.
The first thing that I noticed was that there are waaaay too many students per class. Way more than is reasonable. When they ran out of seats in my first class, they forced a lot of students to take the night classes. Every class that I was in had a lot more students than there was tools and machines to work on. When you take the tour in the diesel shop, notice all those nice Cummins and Cat engines? The reason that they are nice is because students aren't allowed to touch them. There are about 25 or so engines that hardly run that all students must share. These machines have so many problems that they are almost unusable to diagnose and use the OBD computers on.in another class, students disassemble and reassemble torque converters and hydraulic cylinders that are missing half the parts.
In all classes, it seems that the teachers were totally unmotivated and almost every day students stand in line or wait for a 'sign-off' the majority of time they are there. Remember, it costs about $100 A DAY (not including living expenses) to be there. After my team and I rebuilt a dead ZF transmission, we waited for FOUR DAYS to test it and get the 'ok' from the instructor. To put this in perspective, WyoTech got $1200 to make us sit around and BS and wait. You WILL spend most of your time doing roll call, taking rediculous quizzes and sitting around.
On-Campus housing: DON'T DO IT. When I got there I found that they has assigned four guys to a one-room apartment. The housing department is a complete racket. The only half way livable place they place students in in a local hotel that hasn't been maintained in probably over a decade. It didn't even have hot water except at 4am. Heaters were mostly broken and there was garbage and filth and noise everywhere.
Climate: Laramie is below zero for most of the winter. Icy, cold and miserable. The reason the school was built in Laramie was because land is cheap.
The Auto program is a joke. Honestly, my high school auto shop was more modern. The cars that you work on are all junkyard vehicles, and every knob, wire and lens is broken off or ripped apart. The actual class itself is useless. They teach you things like how to rebuild an alternator and starter, things nobody has done for 25 years. Classroom material looked like it was cheaply photocopied from 1960's tech manuals. Halfway into the Auto 1 program all we had done was change oil, water, check light bulbs and crush filters. No Joke. Someone who came in to this program not knowing anything about mechanics would not even be qualified to work at a Jiffy Lube.
Financing: As I said, the cost is around 25K, which means that almost everybody has to do student aid. The school has a policy that if you withdraw before certain times, you get a portion of your tuition refunded. I received numerous grans and loans including the Pell grant, which Wyotech lied about to get me signed up for, then revoked the grant funds five weeks into the program. Also I learned the hard way that even though the program lasts nine months, for purposes of tuition half-way is only about a couple months into the program.
Thus, I got NOTHING back on my tuition, despite the fact I withdrew less than halfway in. Wyotech will take the loan and grant funds that the government gives out UP FRONT, so that if the student quits (as many do), they get paid and the student gets 'the shaft'. At the very least, I think this is deceptive.
Employment: The rectuiter will tell you that there is a 100% employment upon graduation. This is completely false. Out if the 8 guys that I kept track of, three got jobs in the field that were living wage positions within five months following graduation. That 25K piece of paper is not worth what they tell you it is worth out in the real world. Most guys end up takin jobs out of the mechanics fields, or work changing oil or detailing cars. Also, don't figure on getting work while in school, the townsfolk HAAAAAATE Wyotech students, and you have to compete with UW kids who have a lot more flexibility.
In conclusion, don't go to WyoTech. They will make you feel like a 'Big Dog' until you sign the papers, then you will amount to less than garbage to them. I've seen it firsthand. I was seriously considering filing a lawsuit for about two years afterwards. I still can't believe I spent around 30K and wasted six months of my life with this outfit.: (
Jose
Eugene, Oregon
U.S.A.
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